Apple released the first public beta of iOS 18.5 on April 15, more than two weeks after the company released iOS 18.4 to the general public. While that update brought more emoji to all iPhones, the latest beta brings some bug fixes and some small changes to the Mail apps of developers and public beta testers, but not much else.
Uncheck the “Show Contact Photos” option to streamline your inbox.
Apple introduced a few small Mail app updates in the iOS 18.5 beta. One of those updates makes it easier to adjust the app’s settings by letting you show or hide contact photos in Mail. Contact photos are the images to the left of emails in Mail and help identify who sent those emails.
Mail will show Contact Posters by default, but you can turn them off from within the app with the iOS 18.5 beta. To do so, open Mail, tap the three dots (…) in the top-right corner of your screen and tap Show Contact Photos. Now all your emails will just show the subject line and a preview of the message, similar to how Mail looked before iOS 18.
This option is in iOS 18.4, but it’s buried in Settings and not easy to locate.
Another update concerns Categories. If you have the mode enabled, you can now see a small tab on the right side of your screen near the other categories. Swipe the categories bar near the top of Mail to the left, and this small tab will expand to reveal the category All Mail.
This category isn’t new and you can find it in iOS 18.4. But there was no small tab on the right side of your screen to signal it was present off-screen. Therefore, All Mail flew under the radar — I didn’t even know the option was there until this beta.
This category appears to be a way to simultaneously enable Categories and List View — the pre-Categories view of Mail. By tapping All Mail, you’re viewing your messages free of any categorization, like you would in List View.
